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Saturday, May 25, 2013

Hikyō na kōmori: Bats, Beasts and Birds

Beast! Bat! Birds?

This is another microgame from Oink games that comes in a nicely designed box of 3 games. It plays 4-7 players and is much lighter than the other 2 that comes in the box with it. How does it play?

Cards are distributed to all players. During your turn, you will play a card either face up or face down in front of you. If its face down, you can say its either a Beast or Bird card. You can bluff as well! When all players have played their card, all cards faced down are revealed. Players see who has won and those who have won will keep the card face up in front of them (to count as points). Otherwise, their cards are discarded. When all cards have been played, the player with the most face up cards in front of them will win.
Now the interesting bit is how to count who has won a round. If all cards played are the same type, everyone wins. If there are only beasts and birds cards, then majority type will win the round otherwise, if tie, all will win. If there are only bats and beasts/birds cards, then the beasts/birds will win the round. If there bats, birds and beasts cards, then bats and the majority (birds/beasts) will win the round. Finally, If there are bats, birds and beasts and birds and beasts are tied, only the bats will lose.
It is definitely a game I have not played before but I am not sure if it works well with 4. It seems that the game will benefit with more players as that will make it slightly more unpredictable and will make it very important to be able to guess the mentality of the group and thereby scoring points. I will need to try it again to be sure how I feel but for now its a Try before you buy.